


Prelude to an Autumn Wind

by Zenolalia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Ask me about my fucked up Winchester incest fiasco headcanons, Background Relationships, Can you have incest panic or is it still gay panic?, Coda, Did u say Dean Winchester reassessing his self loathign through internalized homophobia?, Gay Panic, I literally still can't believe they made Wincest canon but did That to Destiel god help us all, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Incest, M/M, Multi, Not Beta Read, PTSD flashbacks specifically so look out kids, Panic Attacks, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers, Vignette, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenolalia/pseuds/Zenolalia
Summary: Historically, when a higher power decides to "set things right" for Dean, it has gone poorly.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Prelude to an Autumn Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sedusa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sedusa/gifts), [vanceypants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanceypants/gifts).



> Please be advised that if you are coming here to have a Positive and Enjoyable Wincestiel Experience, you are going to be as blueballsed by this fic as I was by this fucking show. Please also note that the last few weeks have turned me into a Hatefan Spitewriter for this shitfuck show.
> 
> I definitely 100% want everyone to have as much fun as is physically possible in this fandom!! But, oh boy, oh wow, oh man, oh jeez, am I FUCKING LIVID.
> 
> I may have some difficulty being a fun party guest.
> 
> Still, it was an honour serving with you all. o7

“Set some things right.”

That was how Bobby had put it.

A crawling doubt drifted up Dean’s spine, but the sky was blue, the road freshly paved, and the leather wrap of Baby’s steering wheel was as smooth and supple as the day she rolled off the factory line. No decades-old palm prints cracking the wrapping, no worn down wobble in the steering shaft.

It should have been off-putting. After a lifetime of reading tiny cues and hoping not to get killed over a stupid, beginner’s mistake like forgetting about rusty farm equipment in a rusty farm.

Had ‘setting things right’ included unsnarling decades of hard-won reflexes?

Or was that just how dying for real felt? A deep, resting peace. An absolute certainty that all the horror and the pain was done, and now there was just an infinite expanse of comfort waiting to soothe his broken bones.

Forever was a long time. Would he eventually lose himself, become nothing more than the sunlight on the asphalt? Would he be as placidly accepting of that, when it happened?

Dean hadn’t ever really thought about growing old. Hadn’t expected to. And, he’d been right, of course.

But maybe this was what it would be like. To let the fire of him settle, from inferno to the heat radiating off the road.

A sign for highway 725 on his right. 

It was a long way from Sioux Falls to Virginia. Far longer than a single song could possibly last. Then again, if he had to guess, it had been playing for almost half an hour now.

Still not long enough.

It was like living in a dream. All the best parts of long drives, the liquid sun, the blissful isolation, the hypnotic hush of rubber grinding against asphalt. No aching back, no tingling numbness in his left leg, no shallow recognition that his shoulder wasn’t as strong as it used to be, couldn’t really hold his arm up to the wheel comfortably for 7, 10, 15 hours.

No terror curdling alongside the realization that reality was slippery here. The soft certainty that this was new, but it was what he had been made for all those unfathomable eons ago. To sit in his car, blasting his cassettes at a fidelity that wasn’t even possible in life, and make the long drive home.

Hours, minutes, a single snapshot later the song finally ended. Dean popped pause before the next track could start, wondered if it would have paused regardless given that this was his dream, his heaven, and pulled Baby to the side of a bridge.

The river was roaring, muddy and foaming with freshly drained floodwater. Probably the first autumn storm hitting the windward face of the range. There had been a time when knowing the flooding habits of the major Appalachian river basins had been life or death knowledge. Not his life, exactly, but someone’s. Maybe one day he’d find them up here, all those people he’d saved.

A frisson of guilt fought its way past the luxuriant comfort.

All those things he’d hunted.

Was Benny here?

Had setting things right included that much?

Even in the soft embrace of sleep, Dean knew better than to let himself ask after any other inhuman entities. 

He waited for his heart to race, for adrenaline to flood his body.

Fight, or flee. He couldn’t call it flight.

The suffocating, pinprick focus never came.

Dean leaned against the railing, felt the sun on his neck, too weak with autumn to warm his back. The wind and water scent of the rushing river carried this high, but not the frigid mist itself. There was only this moment, stretching into the endless horizon. 

No heartbeat. No breath. No pain. No pressure of pisswater beer making its way through his guts. 

No animal panic.

There would be time to ask any questions he wanted.

The water was hideous and vital, the knowledge that it would easily take out a good third of the local predators if they tried to cross it chasing a victim rested unneeded in his mind, and no echoed stink of mud, sweat and blood clung to it.

Some understanding of this place unstuck inside him. 

He felt himself smile. Yesterday it would have been against his will. Today the need for stoic acceptance had been all but erased. A single song couldn’t last an hour. An hour couldn’t last a lifetime.

“Hey, Sammy.” A lifetime of his body slowly decaying, his heart constantly betraying, his friends, family, everything he'd ever loved disappearing. How many times had he not even dared to wish he could rinse those scars off like blood in a motel shower?

“Dean.” 

Sam’s smile was so painfully gentle, so deeply worn into his face. It pulled at his cheeks like he had been doing it for longer than he’d even been alive.

Dean wasn’t the older brother anymore, was he?

An ancient question turned over in the farthest reaches of Dean’s mind, decades buried, and never quite forgotten. How could anyone forget that?

Right now, right here, he buried his face into his brother’s shoulder, breathed in the sun and water and Sam.

There would be time for all those questions, later.

There would be time for everything.


End file.
